Aging rockers are reunited

John A. MacInnes

An aging Newton Mearns mortgage advisers dream has come true after an album he and his group released in 1974 has been re-released!

The quartet, now a retired minister, a computer programmer, a property valuer and a mortgage advisor of pensionable age are enjoying newfound fame after an album they made as young Christian rockers has become a collector’s item

“We’re all retired, or close to it, and now we find ourselves on a record label’s listings right beside The Who, The Stones and Nirvana,” said Rev Doug McRoberts, who played lead guitar on the 1974 recording. “Back in the 1970s, I was lead guitarist with a hard rock band called White Light. We were finalists in Melody Maker’s national rock contest in 1972, no less - and we issued a vinyl LP ‘Parable’ before becoming adults and going off to more conventional careers.”

Now Doug and his fellow band members are amazed to find their music back in demand.

The recording came to the attention of Guerssen record company and a vinyl LP exchanged hands in the United States for $950.

Mr McRoberts who for many years was a church minister in Malta said: “It was a huge surprise. We never thought this would happen.

Who would think that one of the first things to happen after we retire is for our music to be re-issued?”

The band was White Light, a quartet of committed Christians who were determined to spread the Gospel through rock music. Doug, now 66 from Inverness, and his brother, bass player Dave McRoberts, 62 from Newton Mearns, teamed up with drummer Alex Smith, 65, from Glasgow, and keyboardist David Murdoch, 65, from West Kilbride, to take the Christian message to rock venues and clubs. “Our whole reason for existing was to get the message out,” Doug says. “We weren’t in it for the money. It was always about spreading the message of God’s love.”